Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn (Spenser, #44)(31)

“Maybe it’s a coincidence?” I said.

“Belson,” Glass said. “I thought you told me this guy was smart.”

“Lucky,” Belson said. “I told you he was often lucky, Captain.”





26


Where’s Galway?” I said.

“In the back room playing poker with the other hounds.” Teddy Cahill looked up from the bar and shrugged. “What the f*ck happened to you?”

I touched the bandage on my eye. “I disturbed some local wildlife.”

“Looks more like it disturbed you,” Cahill said.

I took a seat next to him. It was just after six at Florian Hall, the fire union headquarters down in Dorchester. The union had an impressive array of banquet rooms, offices, and, most important, a bar. Cahill walked behind the bar, popped the top of a Sam Adams, and slid it over to me. We were the only ones in the large space.

“I always admired you guys.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said.

“You know a guy named Rob Featherstone?”

“Sure,” he said. “Works over at the fire museum. He’s a Spark.”

“Was a Spark,” I said. “He’s dead.”

“No shit.” Cahill cut his eyes over at me. “He wasn’t the bastard who got dumped off the bridge?”

I nodded and drank some Sam Adams. The union knew how to calibrate their cooler. The beer was ice cold. In a separate room, a rock band was warming up for a wedding. The walls vibrated pictures of long-dead union members and guys standing among the ruins of many buildings. “A police lieutenant named Belson just braced me, thinking he might be tied to the arson case.”

“Yeah, I know Frank,” Cahill said. “He should’ve called.”

“Check your messages,” I said. “I’m sure he will.”

“I thought it was a suicide,” Cahill said. “Heard the guy jumped.”

“He had an incentive,” I said. “There were four bullet holes in him.”

“Christ.”

“Had he talked to you about the church fire?”

Cahill stubbed out the cigarette and scratched his cheek. “Nope,” he said. “Not a word. Or anybody else from the Sparks, for that matter. Rob Featherstone. Really? I think he collected model trains or some shit.”

The band launched into the first few bars of Foreigner’s “Hot Blooded.” They got to the part where the fever reached a hundred and three and stopped to make some adjustments.

“Could he have contacted someone else in Arson?” I said. “Maybe as a confidential source?”

“Sure,” Cahill said. “It’s possible. But I doubt it. We tend to talk amongst ourselves on stuff like that. And if a guy like Featherstone had known something, he wouldn’t have kept it a secret. Those Sparks really bleed for the department. They come out at all hours looking out for us. I mean, this is a thankless job sometimes. Just like being a cop. Someone gives you a pat on the back and it’s appreciated.”

“Sometimes comely young women hand me a shot of rye on the street,” I said. “Gumshoe boosters.”

Cahill grunted under the walrus mustache.

“I interviewed Featherstone last week,” I said. “He didn’t offer anything. He said he got there maybe two minutes before the engines. He talked a lot about Dougherty, Bonnelli, and Mulligan. But Belson says Featherstone told his wife he knew who’d been setting all the fires the last few months. Maybe Holy Innocents.”

“And?”

“And he never told her or told the police,” I said.

“Of course not,” he said.

“Yep.”

“Son of a bitch.”

Cahill hadn’t touched his beer since I walked in. He opened a pack of cigarettes and pulled out a fresh one. It had been a while since I’d been around so much smoke. I figured the union didn’t think the smoke would offend the firefighters. I drank some more beer. The band turned it up to eleven, rocking out to Eddie Money, “Baby Hold On.”

“Jesus,” Cahill said. “What is this, the summer of f*cking ’78?”

“You remember that far back?”

“Only when I drink.”

“Busy week?”

“Eight more suspicious fires,” Cahill said. He streamed smoke out of the side of his mouth. “It’s what keeps me young.”

“I’ll check with the museum and let you know what I find out.”

Cahill nodded. He looked up at the collection of booze bottles on the shelf and the dusty framed photographs of firefighters then and now. A ceramic figurine of a little boy dressed in fireman’s garb stood tall by the whiskeys. He was holding a cute little ax.

“You want to be straight about what happened to your freakin’ eye?”

“I was following a guy named Tyler King and some of his friends threw up a roadblock,” I said. “We made a real mess out of some fruits de mer.”

“I got a nice file on Tyler King.”

“We just had a chat yesterday.”

Cahill shook his head. “But he’s not your guy,” he said. “All these fires ain’t his work, Spenser. We eliminated him a long time ago.”